Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, says 11 states have provided 55,000 hectares to establish ranches to curb farmers and pastoralists clashes in their states.
Ogbeh made this known at a news conference on Thursday in Abuja.
Ogbeh said the states are Plateau, Kaduna, Kano, Gombe, Katsina, Taraba, Niger, Adamawa, Jigawa, Sokoto and the FCT.
He said of all the enterprise in the livestock sector, only the poultry industry had achieved an appreciable level of commercialisation.
Ogbeh said other industries in the livestock sector were predominantly in the hands of subsistence farmers with pastoralist system of production contributing over 90 per cent of cattle production in the country.
He said the 2011 National Agricultural Sample Survey indicated that Nigeria was endowed with an estimated 19.5 million cattle, 72.5 million goats, 41.3 million sheep, 7.1 million pigs and 28,000 camels.
Accordingly, the minister said the country had 145 million chickens, 11.6 million ducks, 1.2 million turkeys and 974, 499 donkeys.
Ogbeh said this impressive statistics, which had made Nigeria number one in livestock in Africa, had not met the national demand of animal protein or contributed to the GDP over the years.
He decried the low milk production in Nigeria as a cow produced one litre of milk a day while a cow in Saudi Arabia or Brazil produced 30 to 40 litres.
“Saudi Arabia produces 4.7 million litres of milk daily while Nigeria imports about 1.3 billion dollar worth of milk annually to make up deficit.
Meanwhile, former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, Professor Ango Abdullahi, has said that nobody can stop the Fulani herdsmen from grazing in any part of the country.
(Tribune)
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